PROJECT 2025

by Janet Blair

Call me crotchety and loud
ineffective and utopian 
unrealistic and wasteful.

Laugh as I hold postered signs 
made with markers and glitter 
waving them at street corners downtown 
chanting about democracy 
calling out to the cars honking in agreement.

Roll your eyes.
Say it will not make one iota of difference.
We are awash in red here, completely surrounded. 

As the blood seeps in,

words are banned and bodies under lock.

They machete through decades of progress
rewrite dictionaries and craft spells to spoon feed 
the dozing people around us.  

Still, I will stomp
call out to the moon and paint my face 
bottling up today's screams 
to send floating toward the future

never choosing silence or submission. 

You see, I was trained for this shit early on—
learned how to cradle a cry inside when the belt lashed
how to hold my head up the next day 
and look a tyrant straight in the eye

how to march through the 

shredded gift-wrapping paper

and blooming bluish bruises 
toward an exit sign 
at the end of a long, long hallway of years. 

I know how to crawl 
                                toward the light... 

Janet Blair lives and works in the Tampa Bay area. Currently, she is a weekend poet who dreams of writing full time. Her most recent work can be found in South Florida Poetry Journal (SoFloPoJo), The Florida Bards Anthology and The Eckerd Review.

ELECTION SEASON

by David Chorlton

Photo of Cooper’s hawk by Jason Finley at Birds of Westwood.

Midsummer heat as October begins
and a shivering cry
from out of sight signals
the coyotes’ prayer to the sun
when they give back the world
to human rule. The quiet neighbors
 
have begun setting out
yard signs to reveal
their innermost beliefs. 
One side sings, the other
screams. Some just want
a shake-up to discover
what outlaw spirit brings
while still as thought
 
the Cooper’s hawk
on a street lamp against
the orange clouds has winter
in one eye and summer
in the other. Another day the heat lasts
 
into darkness, later
than the evening news, long after
Happy Hour is over
and midnight’s face glows bright
high above mendacity,
 
doubt and the choices
to be made between line dancing
at Cactus Jack’s
or voting for the silent stars.

David Chorlton moved to Phoenix from Europe back when Phoenix still had a little provincial quaintness to it. Growth applies to the good and bad qualities alike, and it isn't always easy to adjust. Leonard Cohen's famous lines help: There is a crack in everything, that's how the light gets in.

PLEASE CHOOSE

by Donald Sellitti

Nina Chanel Abney, “Hobson’s Choice” (2017), acrylic and spray paint on canvas, 84 1/4 x 120 3/16 x 1 15/16 inches (image via Hyperallergic)

Please choose which dead to mourn. Now,
with your sorrow and your anger still as
raw as the shoveled earth above them. Please choose.

The children in their shorts and Messi jerseys
dead beneath the mothers clothed head to toe
in garments turned to shrouds, or

the children lying bloody in their soccer shirts
shot point blank with mothers forced to watch.
Mourn either one, not both. Please choose.

Scream loudly in my ear until I hear
you. It will never make me feel your pain, but
I might finally come to understand. 

I will not judge you for the choice you make, 
but you have no other choice but choosing.
Please choose which dead you will avenge.
Please choose.

Donald Sellitti honed his writing skills as a scientist/educator at a Federal medical school in Bethesda, MD before turning to poetry following his retirement. Numerous publications in journals with titles such as Cancer Research and Oncology Letters have been followed by publications in journals with titles like The Alchemy Spoon, Better than Starbucks, and Rat’s Ass Review, which nominated him for a Pushcart Prize in 2022.

DISPLACEMENT

by Erik Schwab

Graphic source: The Daily Plant.

It’s not that they’re screaming. It isn’t pain exactly,

in the market garden, these kohlrabis and cabbages,

these garlic scapes: it’s that they’re in shock. Harvest

is our word, theirs must be apocalypse. But another

word is anthropomorphize and someone told me

once I shouldn’t do it and I believed them and found

the stump of my root dunked in a washbasin and divested

of holy dirt. Now near the end of time

I wish medications were poems, I wish I were floating

over lakewater, skipping silver marbles instead of

saying the new things I say every reluctant day: I’m

on the mend, thanks, thanks, I’m grateful for the

prayer, for the sea urchin, for the red beetle, for

the cabinet of curiosities you sent and for the gig driver

who lost three family members while my heart was 

locked behind a thick pandemic door.

The right kind of time traveler would go twenty years back

and plant that tree, but we service-patched cyborgs

haul our untested upgrades in one direction only, toward

the gracious refusal, toward the retirement of connections, until

the building falls in the middle of the night, the slumbering tenants

dreaming of skydiving and waking to astonishment.

Erik Schwab lives in Seattle, WA. Last year he started writing poems for the first time since college, with the invaluable help of a weekly workshop at Community Building Art Works.

THE PANDEMONIUM AT FREEDOMLAND

by Rick Mullin

Please Scream Inside Your Heart,’ Japanese

Amusement Park Tells Thrill-Seekers                          

—National Public Radio, July 9, 2020

We’d ask you, please, to scream inside your heart.
Consider others and the outcomes of your actions.
Secure yourself. The ride’s about to start.

The mechanism of this rocket cart
will get thrown off by any loud distractions.
We’d ask you, please, to scream inside your heart.

In Freedomland, survival is the art
of navigating obstacles and factions.
Secure yourself. The ride’s about to start.

The dark comes fast. It’s difficult to chart
the course of cannon shots and counteractions.
We’d ask you, please, to scream inside your heart.

It’s quiet now. I feel we’ve grown apart
composing our corrections and retractions.
Secure yourself. The ride’s about to start.

Democracy, the Slide of Bonaparte…
forget those rusty Freedomland attractions.
We’d ask you, please, to scream inside your heart.
Secure yourself. The ride’s about to start.


Rick Mullin's newest poetry collection is Lullaby and Wheel.

ODE TO A CHAINED SONGBIRD IN THE TIME OF CORONAVIRUS

by Julia Meylor

Credit: Mauritshuis, The Hague

      In response to The Goldfinch, Carel Fabritius, 1654


We, too, sing behind locked doors, sweet bird.
Bound by restraints of fear, desire, the absurd.
We listen to operas, Broadway musicals, country western, jazz,
our deafening heartbeats, razzamatazz.
We open wide our patio doors to blast our fancy stereos,
to strum our guitars, to serenade our masked heroes.
We ask Alexa to drown out our loneliness, our unrest,
our entitled nonessentialness.

Tethered bird, we are appeased by sweet useless notes
that spin off to full pink moons and aligned planets.
Simple refrains of all for one—lean on me, come together,
rise up, sweet Caroline. Alleluia.
But it is the specters on empty streets and poisoned ships
we fear as much as touching our face, our lips.
It is a choked scream echoing across a backyard fence,
why we soap our hands and rinse.

Oh, feathered thing, keep vigil on your solitary throne,
feed us the seeds of a hopeful tune we can call our own.
For we are stumbling blindly into a craven new world,
with no elixir, no redeemer, no magic sword.
Give us this day, this week, this greening season of hush.
Show us how to bless it all without human touch.
For we are chastened by all we thought we knew,
by all we’ve lost, by all we cannot do.

Julia Meylor, of Groton, Connecticut, is a published poet and essayist, freelance editor, proofreader, and occasional babysitter. She retired in 2018 after working as a corporate communications manager, high school English teacher, and newspaper editor. Her poems have appeared in numerous literary journals and anthologies. She shares her poems, essays, and photography in her blog, Between Land and Sky, and she loves words almost as much as her grandchildren.

WHEN WE KNOW THE DANGER

by Brooke Herter James

when it means pushing
the bureau across the bare floor
to jam the door shut   hiding

behind the curtain    cowering
beneath the chair   between the legs
of someone bigger  stronger

when we know the scary
inside is worse than
the whatever out there

can we open the windows
and take off our masks
just long enough to scream?


Brooke Herter James is a poet and children’s book author living in Vermont.

RODRIGO TREATS DONALD

by Jonel Abellanosa

Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, previously praised and invited by President Trump to come to the White House, said he will not visit the United States during or after his term because the country is “lousy.” Duterte's remarks about one of the Philippines' oldest allies was in response to Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who said he would protest if the Filipino leader utilized Trump's invitation. “There will never be a time that I will go to America during my term, or even thereafter. So what makes that guy think I'll go to America? I've seen America, and it's lousy,” Duterte told reporters Friday about McGovern. —Washington Post, July 22, 2017

eye

scream

eye scream

eye scream eye

scream eye scream

eye scream eye scream

scream eye scream

eye scream

*********

********

*cone cone*

cone cone

**cone**

*cone*

cone

co

ne

co

ne

Jonel Abellanosa resides in Cebu City, the Philippines.  His poetry has appeared in numerous journals and anthologies including Marsh Hawk Review, Rattle, Anglican Theological Review, Star*Line, Poetry Kanto, Spirit Fire Review, Carbon Culture Review, The McNeese Review, GNU Journal and Dark Matter Literary Journal.  He has three chapbooks, Pictures of the Floating World (Kind of a Hurricane Press), The Freeflowing All (Black Poppy Review) and Meditations (Alien Buddha Press).  He is a Pushcart Prize and a Dwarf Stars Award nominee. Several of his poems have been published on TheNewVerse.News.

DANGEROUS WOMEN

by Elizabeth S. Wolf

It was her first concert
out with friends. The gang of girls.
Besties since babies, they said.
They picked outfits and did their hair,
one high ponytail,  smoky eyes. They listened
to their parents lecture and promised
to follow the signs and obey the rules and
not take drinks from strangers and
oh my god mom, relax. It’s a concert.
Not a bar. Not a North-West Derby
brawl. Just a bunch of girls
dancing and screaming to their
favorite songs. It was Ariana Grande
live on stage: Manchester Arena
Manchester England
22 May 2017.

Three girls, who decided
at the last minute not to wear
kitten ears- three bold teens
walked into the concert as if
they owned the world.

One girl died on the floor,
shattered; the last thing she saw
bouquets of pink balloons
rising towards the ceiling.

The second girl bled from wounds
scattered about her body. She is
in hospital now, hooked up to tubes,
waiting on tests. For several hours
she asked so many questions, over
and over, but now she does not.
She answers the doctors queries,
shifts for the nurses hands: yes, her
ears are still ringing; yes, she still
smells burnt tubing. She sips water
and stares. Shell shock, they whisper.
Her ma and da take turns at her
bedside or tending the others
back home.

The third girl went home
uninjured. She spent a little
longer in the loo and got
separated from her friends.
She lost her voice
screaming for hours.
Now she won’t talk, doesn’t
eat, doesn’t drink. She lies
curled on her bed, clutching
the string from a pink
balloon. When she goes
to the bathroom, her mum
stands by the doorway, crooning
a lullaby. They call her
uninjured, because
she didn’t bleed
at the scene.

She lay in her bed while
day broke up night, again
and again. And on the third
day she called her mum.
Mum, she whispered, wide eyed,
after the bomb there was blood
on the walls, I got so scared.
I was alone! she said,
alone alone. But then
I saw a lady, almost like you,
and she stopped running to lift
up a little girl who had fell.
And the girl, she just hung
on, and I remembered to
look for the helpers.

That’s right, said her mum,
stroking her hair. Look for
the helpers.

And then I was running and screaming
and in the big room, in the hotel,
there was a lady, black as pitch, she
smelled like soap, said the girl. And
I was shaking and looking all around
and she came and held me. I
don’t even know who she is.

That was Amina, said her mum.
She works for the hotel, she
cleans the rooms. She left her own
country to flee the bombs and
find food.  Now she lives here.
And found you.

Mum, said the girl. I know what I want
to do now. I know.

What’s that? asked her mum.

I want to be a helper, said the
girl. And she got out of bed.


Author’s note: Characters and some incidents in this narrative are fictional although descriptions are based on news reports from Manchester.

Elizabeth S. Wolf writes because telling stories is how we make sense of our world, how we heal, and how we celebrate. She seeks that sliver of truth amidst the chattering monkey mind. Also, she sings loudly while driving. Elizabeth’s chapbook What I Learned: Poems is forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in fall 2017.

ARS POETICA

by Megan Collins

Trivia Weatherspoon takes a photo of the mural depicting Alton Sterling following a July 7 prayer service and vigil at Triple S Food Mart where Sterling was shot and killed by Baton Rouge Police in the early hours of July 5. —The New Orleans Advocate, July 6, 2016. Advocate staff photo by HILARY SCHEINUK.

I don’t have a poem in me
for Alton Sterling.
I don’t want to write
how they laid out his body
like one in a coffin
before they even shot him.

I’m sick of stanzas
and what it takes
to build them.
The Italian for room,
yet they cannot house
the living or the dead,
can’t keep people safe
when the locks on their doors
are only words.

Look how these walls
tremble. See how the lines
never line up,
how they cannot be stacked
like men
and women
in the seasick belly
of a ship.

Look how the waves
keep surging,
how the water still gets in.
It doesn’t matter
how tightly
I craft my language
or if my metaphor
is mixed—
there’s no proper seal
in a sentence; there’s no one
these rooms can save.

Even now, at the close
of what I’ve written,
see how much I’ve already failed him—
how the end of this poem
is only a period
when it should be an infinite scream.

Megan Collins holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Boston University. She teaches creative writing at the Greater Hartford Academy of the Arts and Central Connecticut State University. She is also Senior Poetry Editor of 3Elements Review. Her work has appeared in many journals, including Linebreak, Off the Coast, Rattle, Spillway, and Tinderbox.

SEPTEMBER

by Shirani Rajapakse

Image source: Wikipedia

Remember, you said, that day. People
falling from the sky like stars,
burnt out flares unable to cling on. Fire

in the sky metal crashing above. Remember
how it felt as you looked up at the
heavens, the noise deafened

and the dust from the stars crumbled
into your eyes. Horrorstruck, was this the end?
Remember the smell, flesh, iron roasting

cheap like a giant barbecue in the sky
while all around the grey dust of construction
falling like haze on an early morn.

You screamed but no one
heard amidst the noise of a world gone mad.
You cried in vain for what you

couldn’t hold, then forgot as
the years flashed by and they made plans anew
leaving you out of it. No use to no one

anymore.  Remember how you forgot
it all, buried in your life, the chores, the rush
and swirl of work, the demands

of modernity. Remember how she felt falling,
burning, crying. But do remember
how a madman rose in the sky

one day to steal the future leaving her
with tears and nothing else except a few
burnt out shreds. Remember.


Shirani Rajapakse is a Sri Lankan poet and author. She won the Cha “Betrayal” Poetry Contest 2013. Her collection of short stories, Breaking News (Vijitha Yapa 2011) was shortlisted for the Gratiaen Award. Shirani’s work appears or is forthcoming in Linnet’s Wings, Channels, Spark, Berfrois, Poets Basement, Earthen Lamp Journal, Asian Cha, Dove Tales, Buddhist Poetry Review, About Place Journal, Skylight 47, The Smoking Poet, New Verse News, The Occupy Poetry Project and anthologies Poems for Freedom, Voices Israel Poetry Anthology 2012, Song of Sahel, Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology, World Healing World Peace and Every Child Is Entitled to Innocence.